New Nanotech Could Create Light Laptops, Slim TVs and Crisp Smartphone Displays

New materials are being developed by researchers that functions on a nanoscale, which could result in the development of lighter laptops, slimmer televisions and crisper smartphone visual displays.

Known as "giant surfactants" - or surface films and liquid solutions - the researchers, led by Stephen Z.D. Cheng, dean of University of Akron's College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, used a technique known as nanopatterning to combine functioning molecular nanoparticles with polymers to build these novel materials.

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The giant surfactants developed at UA are large, similar to macromolecules, yet they function like molecular surfactants on a nanoscale, Cheng says. The outcome? Nanostructures that guide the size of electronic products.

Nanopatterning, or self-assembling molecular materials, is the genius behind the small, light and fast world of modern-day gadgetry, and now it has advanced one giant step thanks to the UA researchers who said that these new materials, when integrated into electronics, will enable the development of ultra-lightweight, compact and efficient devices because of their unique structures.

During their self-assembly, molecules form an organized lithographic pattern on semiconductor crystals, for use as integrated circuits.

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Cheng said that these self-assembling materials differ from common block copolymers (a portion of a macromolecule, comprising manyunits, that has at least one feature which is not present in the adjacent portions) because they organize themselves in a controllable manner at the molecular level.

Cheng, who also serves as the R.C. Musson and Trustees Professor of Polymer Science at UA, said that the IT industry wants microchips that are as small as possible so that they can manufacture smaller and faster devices.

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He pointed out that the current technique can produce the spacing of 22 nanometers only, and cannot go down to the 10 nanometers or less necessary to create tiny, yet mighty, devices. The giant surfactants, however, can dictate smaller-scale electronic components.

He said that this is exactly what his team is pursuing - self-assembling materials that organize at smaller sizes, which are less than 20 or even 10 nanometers.

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The story has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Source-ANI